| CNY: Pineapple Tarts (TRIAL!) |
Chinese New Year is my all-time favourite festive season and yay, it's approaching soon! And yes, I do know that Christmas has just been over and I still have got some Christmas cookies and Gingerbread Boys and Girls sitting in my cookie jars, but I just can't resist the temptation of kickstarting off my CNY bakes.
So here they are, the must-have for every CNY: Pineapple Tarts. Strictly speaking, this batch is actually my second trial already. I did not take any photos of the first trial in which I had used another recipe because that dough had failed me miserably and the perfectionist in me just had to throw away the remaining dough. So I quickly bucked up and tried another recipe from one of my Asian Sweets baking book.
 Freshly out of the oven.  This recipe required me to use "a few drops of egg yellow coloring". I halved the recipe as I wasn't sure if the texture of these tarts was what I'm looking for and I did not want to end up with one whole batch of pineapple tarts that I do not enjoy eating. And so, I only added two pretty tiny drops (as compared to the few drops the recipe had asked for) so they weren't as golden as the tarts I see in the book.   I'm still unsure of the texture of these tarts, whether they are the melt-in-the-mouth kind in which my family and I adore, or are they the crisp-on-the-outside and crumbly-once-bitten-into kind, or the crisp-on-the-outside and melt-in-the-mouth when bitten kind. I'd have to wait till tomorrow to find out! I'm keeping my fingers crossed. If these tarts fail to reach up to my expectation yet again, I'm so gonna try another recipe tomorrow. |
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| Tong Shui Cafe at Liang Seah Street |
Finally managed to meet up with Meifang today after we finished working. We had agreed to head to Bugis for our tea session. We ended up in Tong Shui Cafe, where there are many different sorts of Hong Kong desserts, noodles, fried rice, and even Western flavorings available. We ordered a Fried Rice and Mixed Fruits Toast. I've tried many of their thick toasts like Peanut Butter with Condensed Milk, Durian Toast, Butter and Honey Toast before and this is the first time I tasted their Mixed Fruits Toast. I'd say it's something really different! I especially love the tangy feel it brings, which it had come from the three different fruit toppings on the toast: Kiwi, Strawberry and Mango. The kiwi is sweet yet a little sour, the strawberry too and the mango chunks with puree are sweet and taste splendid to the tastebud. When these three are eaten together with the fluffy toast, it creates a pretty wonderful taste altogether.
  I like the Fried Rice too, mainly because the rice didn't make my lips feel oiled as compared to some others I had tried before. The rice is really fragrant and the soup that came with the rice was very yummy though I thought it tasted a little like the soup one would get from eating Hainanese Chicken Rice. My only complaint was that the only piece of luncheon meat that came along was really pathetic. It was sliced so thinly (look at the photo below!) that I felt embarrassed for them. I understand that there is this current rage about the dangerous consumption of canned luncheon meat imported from China and this has thus made luncheon meat really expensive in the market. But being a business operator, they should not reduce the size of that piece of meat, then affecting the taste of the whole dish.
But nonetheless, it was a pretty relaxing meal (as it was a Monday and there was nobody else except for the two of us in the cafe) and I had enjoyed it very much. Here's a shot of the Fried Rice and the super-thin piece of luncheon meat:
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Name: An Economist Baker
About Me: I'm a full-time Economics undergraduate and an avid baker who bakes as and when I feel like it. It is my dream to integrate these two important aspects of my life together, and I hope to have my own bakery cafe in the future.
See my profile...
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posted by An Economist Baker at 
